OK, so I want to *practice* typing using the Workman Keyboard Layout. But how to practice?
Recently, codesections@fosstodon.org had a post about typing lessons for programmers using GNU Typist. I also found that my distro also offers Speedpad, a sort of game. And that reminded me of Typing of the Dead, which inspired The Typing of Emacs, a game I once wrote.
T h e T y p i n g O f E m a c s . . . LEVEL 1: 3 SECONDS PER WORD! YOU HAVE 3 LIVES LEFT. elt - Wow! any - Hit! but - Go ahead! own - You can do it! nil - That's it! Done - done? - Desist! - 2 LIVES LEFT! such - You can do it! sort - Hit! made - Amazing! used - OK! which - yes! words - Hit! write - Excellent. parse - Wow! takes - Wow! format - Hit! Upcase - Updcase? - Nooooo! - 1 LIVES LEFT! random - YES! giving - gibuing? - Shame on you! - 0 LIVES LEFT! You have reached 180 characters per minute in 26 seconds by typing 18 words.
OK, but now I want to start working on the new *Workman* layout. Let’s see... I need a “ranking” so that I can start with some “easy” keys and make it progressively harder. Let’s take another look at the basic layer.
Here’s the plan:
1. start with the home row: just words containing ashtgyneoi
2. add some easy to reach keys, for example the three most easily reachable above the left and the right: adding drwfup
3. add the three most easily reachable below the left and the right: adding xmcl (ignoring the comma and dot for the moment)
4. all the letters
OK, so let’s prepare a file! Let’s use `-i` to ignore case. Use that Shift key!
grep -i '^[ashtgyneoi]* < /etc/dictionaries-common/words > workman-1.txt grep -i '^[ashtgyneoidrwfup]* < /etc/dictionaries-common/words > workman-2.txt grep -i '^[ashtgyneoidrwxmcfupl]* < /etc/dictionaries-common/words > workman-3.txt grep -i '^[a-z]* < /etc/dictionaries-common/words > workman-4.txt
And since this is so new, I also need to change something in my setup:
(setq toe-starting-time-per-word 10)
The default is 3s per word and I basically can’t type anything in the time required.
That should give you a quick selection of difficulty levels. Feel free to introduce keys more gradually.
Here’s how to combine two words from the first file:
sort --random-sort workman-one.txt | paste -d ' ' workman-1.txt - > workman-1b.txt
The result:
A gaits Aegean assigning Aeneas ah Ag Se Agassi ignition Agatha ginning Aggie gayest Agnes hoot Agni geneses Aisha ING ...
Yet another interesting take would be to use the 2000 most common words from the Brown corpus... And so on! 😄
Well, back to the `workman-1.txt` file for me!
T h e T y p i n g O f E m a c s . . . LEVEL 1: 10 SECONDS PER WORD! YOU HAVE 3 LIVES LEFT. hie - Wow! tie - OK! shy - Amazing! Noh - You can do it! GTE - Done! sags - Wonderful! goes - OK! oats - Amazing! test - You can do it! heat - Great! goose - Go ahead! hoots - That's it! shoon - Amazing! gains - Excellent. tangs - You can do it! ninths - Hit! Athena - You can do it! testis - Hit! giants - Done! sanity - Timeout! - Desist! - 2 LIVES LEFT! hatting - Wonderful! assigns - Hit! entente - Timeout! - Nooooo! - 1 LIVES LEFT! hyaenas - ? - No! - 0 LIVES LEFT! You have reached 47 characters per minute in 140 seconds by typing 23 words. Hall Of Fame 1. Alex Schroeder 45 cpm 157 sec 24 words 2018-08-30 00:43 2. Alex Schroeder 47 cpm 140 sec 23 words 2018-08-30 14:53 3. Alex Schroeder 12 cpm 30 sec 2 words 2018-08-30 14:51 4. Alex Schroeder 13 cpm 26 sec 2 words 2018-08-30 14:50 5. Alex Schroeder 40 cpm 9 sec 2 words 2018-08-30 00:40
#Keyboard #Workman #Emacs
